Steve Gilliard was a tough minded and knowledgeable historian. I found his writing an inspiration, and there is something worth learning in each of the essays in this series. boor over at DailyKos has put together links for the complete set. I copy the links here so you may share them, and also so I’ll have the links handy to refer to myself.

Under Bush the United States has opted for a policy of imperial domination of the whole planet. In other words, the world is a US colony. AFRICOM is part of this. They call it Full Spectrum Dominance. And this policy is the reason that the State Department and USAID, are being subsumed under the Pentagon, rather than operating independently in Africa. Diplomacy, economic, and political activity, are all dominated by the Department of Defense, the imperial operator in US dealings with the world.

In Africa, this new colonial imperialism is to secure African resources, oil, coltan, gems, etc, but primarily oil. The US has failed to learn two critical historical points, Gilliard writes:

Colonial occupations almost always cost far more than planned and produce negative earnings for the invader. Occupying Iraq and Afghanistan now costs at least US $6 billion monthly. The costs of garrisoning and running colonies usually exceeds what can be looted from them.

It’s always cheaper to buy resources than plunder them. The Soviets thought they would pay for their invasion of Afghanistan by stealing its natural gas. The Washington neo-conservatives who engineered the Iraq war ludicrously claimed its stolen oil would fully cover the costs of invasion and occupation.

There are many ways to pay for things, and sometimes the cheapest is money.